A routing protocol for low-power and lossy networks (“RPL”) describes a trickle mechanism for determining when to transmit destination oriented directed acyclic graph (“DODAG”) information object (“DIO”) packets in a network. A node that receives a DIO packet may use it for network discovery and maintenance. DIO packets may be transmitted at irregular times since the transmission interval between DIO packets is based on the current state of the network. Generally, DIO packets are transmitted more frequently during network formation and periods of network instability and then less frequently once the network stabilizes. A transmitting node may use a trickle timer to determine when to transmit a DIO packet. When the trickle timer expires, the transmitting node transmits a DIO packet. Since the timing of the DIO packet transmissions may be irregular and the transmission time for the next DIO packet may be unknown, a node generally remains in a listen mode to avoid missing a DIO packet. This may prevent a low energy (“LE”) node, such as a battery powered node, from entering a low power mode or sleep state. It would be helpful if a node could determine when the next DIO packet will be transmitted so that it could enter a low power mode and then wake in time to receive the next DIO packet. Even if the node is a fully functioning device (“FFD”), knowing when to expect the next DIO packet may allow the node to more effectively manage its own operations.